Road graders and similar machines are commonly used to maintain public roads. These machines have blades that can be mounted for grading and smoothing the traveled surface of unpaved roads as well as the adjacent ditches and banks. These machines are also used for snow removal. The crews of the governmental units that maintain public roads also have to mow the weeds and other growth along the road especially in the medians and ditches. In order to do this, separate mowing equipment is normally used. This equipment may be specially designed equipment for mowing, or may be mowers that are attached by boom assemblies to tractors or other prime movers. For example, Jordan, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,319,407 discloses the use of a combination of cables and hydraulic cylinders for supporting a mower attachment on a prime mover. This attachment is a rather complex piece of equipment requiring a number of hydraulic cylinders mounted along a boom assembly.
Turner, U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,818, Davison, U.S. Pat. No. 4,996,830 and Johnson, U.S. Pat. No. 4,426,829 all show boom mounted mowers and brush cutters designed for mowing ditches and adjoining banks along a roadway. These boom-type attachments are relatively complex and expensive, and are not easily attached and detached from their prime movers.
Lynch, U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,056 and Parsons, Jr., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,887,417, 4,912,916 and 4,956,965 all show a boom attachment for mounting a mower at the rear of a tractor by a three-point hitch, with the attachment operated from a power takeoff on the rear of the tractor. Similar to the other boom-type attachments for prime movers, these attachments are rather complex and expensive and require a considerable amount of time to mount and dismount from a tractor.
Hash, U.S. Pat. No. 4,250,696 discloses a mower-type attachment for a road grader, but the attachment is mounted so that it would not be suitable for mowing roadside ditches.
None of the prior art references disclose a simple and relatively inexpensive attachment for quick and easy mounting and dismounting to the common road grader, which road maintenance crews have normally sitting idle much of the time during the spring, summer and fall months.
Accordingly, a need exists for an improved mower attachment that can be quickly attached to and detached from a road grader or other similar machine and which is suitable for mowing roadside ditches. Such an attachment would provide for better utilization of existing equipment that normally is sitting idle during the months when the mowing of roadside ditches commonly takes place.